


Celestial Connections

by JadeLavellan (Jadestone)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadestone/pseuds/JadeLavellan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tumblr prompt from an anon: "Things you said under the stars and in the grass" for Solavellan</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celestial Connections

Night in the Emerald Graves falls slowly, the high canopy drawing dusk and shadows over its inhabitants before the sun has even fully left the sky. Red streams of the last dying rays wash over the camp as the Inquisitor and her party walk in after a hard day of travel, the heat of the long summer day still stinging their skin despite the shade.

Solas stares up at the trees above as the group slowly disperses to eat and rest, watching the light filter down through the many-hued green motley of leaves above. It catches on their edges, as though wreathing them with gold, as bright as any treasure of Arlathan. For the briefest moment, he knows he could close his eyes and here, in this rustling green haven, for the span of a heartbeat he could believe he was home.

Instead, he wearily shoulders off his pack, dropping it and his suddenly too-warm vest to the ground beside the tents. The last of the dappled sunbeams fade as the Inquisition busy themselves with maps and reports and the hundred tiny labors necessary to keep everything ordered and running. Fires are lit, more for light than warmth, before the last ruddy glow of sunset has a chance to leave the sky.

Solas considers retiring early; he is sure there is much knowledge he could glean about the area from within the Fade—but Inquisitor Lavellan catches his gaze with her own, her eyes flashing as she mouths “Walk with me?” from across the glen. And, well, he thinks—there will be other nights to explore in slumber. The ruins will wait, but life may not. For now, there is a light breeze that promises a pleasantly warm night after the beating heat of the day.

He slips quietly from the grove and onto a narrow trail, ambling slowly as the rapidly-cooling earth soothes the soles of his bare and tired feet. It is only a few minutes before Lavellan manages to slide away and join him. She has kicked off the boots her advisors insist she wear for her day-to-day escapades—it would not do for their Herald to be brought low by something as humble as a thorn or rusted twist of metal.

“They may gripe that you shirk responsibility, to wander with the strange apostate,” he warns her amiably.

“Mm. They manage well enough without me the ninety-eight percent of the time I spend at other camps and Skyhold. I’m sure they’ll learn to cope with my sudden absence for an evening.”

Solas does not argue, for he is many things, and selfish is one of them. Free time has become one of the most saught-after luxaries of the Inquisitor and her Inner Circle, and he can’t help but feel pleased that she’s decided to squander a few hours of it on him. She chatters about their day as they walk—her frustrations in tracking down yet another Venatori cultist, her confused puzzlement over a strange journal they’d unearthed, and the irritatingly vague clues scribbled within it. Her skin is still flushed from their day’s travels, and in that moment he is once again caught off guard by her unexpected, lively beauty.

He has but an instant to marvel once more at her existence—an existence that should not be, but so undeniably _is_ —but “Look!” she cries with a laugh, leaping off the worn path to chase after something his eye was not quick enough to catch. He sighs in a pretense of exasperation as he races to follow, struggling not to lose her in the swiftly deepening shadows. She scales one rise just to bound down the following slope, and rush up the next hill, nimbly weaving between trunks and around the tangled undergrowth. She scrambles over a cracking boulder— _is she an elf or a mountain goat_ —is all he has time to wonder before copying her lead. He jumps over the top of the rock, landing lightly on the grass behind it. Mercifully, she has stopped.

“Oh, look,” she whispers with a breathlessness that has nothing to do with running, her previous distracted chase already abandoned and forgotten for this new marvel.

Before them lies a clearing, a gentle slope leading down to the top edge of a tall bluff. A hundred feet below, the forest spans on for miles—but here, it offers them a suddenly unveiled view of the night sky. The dark has almost settled in fully now, not just the extended twilight of the woods, but true night. Lavellan steps forward, gazing wonderingly at the hundreds of stars softly flickering above them.

Solas follows her, as always, even sinking down to sit beside her as she tugs the sleeve of his tunic. The grass is cool and fragrant, the earth already slightly damp with the start of tomorrow morning’s dew.

“I haven’t seen this many constellations since I left home,” she comments absently. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed them.”

She sits close enough that he can feel the warmth of her skin radiating through the thin fabric of her skirt. At that moment, all he wants is to reach out and pull her too him; to feel her heartbeat pressed against his skin, and it takes all his self control to stay still.

But she does not wait for a waiver in his restraint. Instead, she leans against his side, nudging his arm and startling him into wrapping his arm around her and drawing her close as she gazes across the forest below.

This is the exhilaration of it, and the danger. He knows she should hate him— _would_ hate him, if she knew—and he can’t force himself to keep a safe distance between them. Even when his self-loathing and discipline outweigh his longing, like back at the Fade-memory of Haven, she catches him off guard. In the middle of his inner beration of himself for wanting her, she pulled his lips to hers, offering freely what he was too shameful to ask for himself. It seems as though whenever he doubts the wisdom of his actions, gathers the strength to pull away, she unknowingly grants him some simple gesture that pulls him back. It is a subtle dance, one she can’t possible be aware of the dangers of. And yet…

He closes his eyes as he tilts his head, pressing his face into the top of her hair. It still carries in it the heat of the sun, and the soft scent of wildflowers and herbs. He inhales deeply before finally responding.

“Many of the constellations you know once went by different names and tales, Vhenan,” he tells her. “The Ancient Elves had their own stories and gods in the sky, long before Tevinter came through and stole them, changing their names as well as the stories behind them.”

“I know,” she replies, and briefly pulls away to glance at the look of startled surprise on his face. She laughs, and settles back against him.

“We know we lost much of our history after the fall of Arlathan,” she tells him. “It’s been long suspected that one of the things they erased was any oral traditions of storytelling, like the constellations. They certainly destroyed as many written sources as they could find.” She shrugs. “It’s not something we could hope to reclaim, and starting new ones would just feel… wrong. But the stars are beautiful. And who could resist telling the stories we do have?”

She cannot know of the desolate pang that tears at his chest at her use of “we” to mean her people, the Dalish. A “we” she no longer even pretends to include him—an effect of his own insistence, but a painful one nonetheless.

“I could tell you one or two, from before,” he offers impulsively. He had not intended to reveal this sort of information, the kind he had no reason to have chanced upon in the Fade, but was instead from his own memory. But he can tell from the way she smiles that she was hoping this would be his response, so he breaks his own rules one more time.

He sweeps his arm across where Fervenial is just breaching the horizon, telling her how the star-spun Oak used to represent the Way of Three Trees, and Andruil. The tale of his brethren tumbles from his lips, and she listens raptly, resting her head on his chest as they lay back in the grass to get a better view.

But the first story leads to a second, and then a third, and he finds all his unspoken homesickness pouring into his words, even as he carefully chooses them to ensure his secret is not revealed. Oh, he had hated Arlathan, and the terrible things his people did to one another. The things his kind did to hers. But after waking in a world where everything was changed, he still somehow yearned for the familiar. This world was not what he had wanted. But at this moment, her head lying on his shoulder, feeling the soft rise and fall of her chest, he can think of no place he would rather be.

“What else?” Lavellan asks, then, “No, wait—let me guess,” she amends. “Tenebrium—the owl, and darkness. That would have to be Falon’din? We still use the owl in his statues.”

“You would be correct,” he acknowledges, and he can feel her smile in satisfaction where her lips are pressed against his chest.

“What about… Judex. The sword of justice. Was that Mythal?”

“Judex? No, not at all. Mythal was represented by the stars you now call Silentir. The figure used to be depicted holding scales, not a sword.”

“Hmm. I suppose.”

“Do you doubt what I am telling you?”

“Do you believe everything you learn in the Fade?”

"I hear many things. They need not be true to learn from them,” he replies, and her only answer is a noncommittal hum. Lavellan shifts, so she is once more on her back and gazing upwards.

“What about Fenrir? That one’s obvious, I suppose. A wolf for the Dread Wolf.”

Solas is silent, for a long moment.

“Yes,” he finally agrees, afraid of what more his tongue might betray tonight. “I suppose so.”

“What? No story this time?”

The air has grown cooler, and Solas can feel the warmth of her body where it is brushes against the side of his own. The scent of crushed grass beneath them wafts in the air, so sweet it speaks more of new spring growth than late summer.

“I think,” he finally replies, “There are more than enough stories of him for now.”

She sighs, realizing he’s done with the subject, undoubtedly attributing it to just another one of his faults against the Dalish.

But he can’t help himself completely—the guilt he carries is too great, and cries out to be unburdened, however vaguely.

“I do believe he would regret much that came out of his actions.”

The Inquisitor shifts slightly, in surprise. “You don’t even believe in our gods,” she points out, the “our” another pinprick of pain in his heart.

“Would I need to?” he asks. He turns his head so that he can watch her fully again, her face carved into sharp angles of light and shadow as she stares into the firmament. It is almost the most relaxed he has ever seen her, the heavy mantle of the power thrust upon her temporarily forgotten.

He is the cause of her struggle and her pain, and very nearly the end of her life. And yet, next to her, he feels like a moth dancing around a candle—trying to keep distant from the heat that could consume him; yet inexplicably and irresistibly pulled towards her light. She blazes like the sun, and with a single touch can dissolve all his carefully constructed boundaries, and he all too willingly joins her in flames.

The mixture of emotions that surge through his chest—homesickness, longing, regret—are too much for him to contain. And so, again, he decides to burn.

He pushes his torso off the ground and rolls so he is holding his body above hers. As he lowers his face to kiss the hollow of her throat, he feels more than hears her soft gasp, a sharp intake of air as she wraps her slender fingers against the back of his neck.

“I think he would regret some things,” he whispers into the side of her neck, brushing his lips down the line of her jaw. “But not all.”

When his mouth meets hers, she tastes like summer, and neither feels the need to speak again for a long while.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I looooove the constellation lore & astrarium puzzles in Inquisition!! I know pretty much all of them by sight now, oops.
> 
> Posted on tumblr here: http://maythedreadwolftakeyou.tumblr.com/post/114800549404/celestial-connections
> 
> And some notes/theories I've made about the Thedas constellations and Elvhen history here: http://maythedreadwolftakeyou.tumblr.com/post/109934462359/on-tevinters-influence-over-elven-history


End file.
